mrmuffins69
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 United States
04/13/2013 09:45 PM
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Report Copyright Violation | Monsanto's chemical war against indigenous Hawaiians Hawaiians are fighting back against the GMO giant.
At 9 am on an overcast morning in paradise, hundreds of protesters gathered in traditional Hawaiian chant and prayer. Upon hearing the sound of the conch shell, known here as Pū, the protesters followed a group of women towards Monsanto's grounds.
"A'ole GMO," cried the mothers as they marched alongside Monsanto's cornfields, located only feet from their homes on Molokai, one of the smallest of Hawaii's main islands. In a tiny, tropical corner of the Pacific that has warded off tourism and development, Monsanto's fields are one of only a few corporate entities that separates the bare terrain of the mountains and oceans.
This spirited march was the last of a series of protests on the five Hawaiian islands that Monsanto and other biotech companies have turned into the world's ground zero for chemical testing and food engineering. Hawaii is currently at the epicenter of the debate over genetically modified organisms, generally shortened to GMOs. Because Hawaii is geographically isolated from the broader public, it is an ideal location for conducting chemical experiments. The island chain's climate and abundant natural resources have lured five of the world's largest biotech chemical corporations: Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneer and BASF. In the past 20 years, these chemical companies have performed over 5,000 open-field-test experiments of pesticide-resistant crops on an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 acres of Hawaiian land without any disclosure, making the place and its people a guinea pig for biotech engineering. |
